Bush brought more bad news. They had gone down to the mouth of the Anadyr, as the priest had already informed me, in the early part of June, and had waited there for the Company's vessels almost four months. Their provisions had finally given out, and they had been compelled to subsist upon the few fish that they were able to catch from day to day, and go hungry when they could catch none. For salt they scraped the staves of an old pork-barrel which had been left at Macrae's camp the previous winter, and for coffee they drank burned rice water. At last, however, salt and rice both failed, and they were reduced to an unvarying and often scanty diet of boiled fish, without coffee, bread, or salt. Living in the midst of a great moss swamp fifty miles from the nearest tree, dressing in skins for the want of anything else, suffering frequently from hunger, tormented constantly by mosquitoes, from which they had no protection, and looking day after day and week after week for vessels which never came, their situation was certainly miserable. The Company's bark Golden Gate had finally arrived in October, bringing twenty-five men and a small steamer; but winter had already set in, and five days afterwards, before they could finish discharging the vessel's cargo, she was wrecked by ice. Her crew and nearly all her stores were saved, but by this misfortune the number of the party was increased from twenty-five to forty-seven, without any corresponding increase in the quantity of provisions for their subsistence. Fortunately, however, there were bands of Wandering Chukchis within reach, and from them Bush succeeded in buying a considerable number of reindeer, which he caused to be frozen and stored away for future use. After the freezing over of the Anadyr River, Bush was left, as Macrae had been the previous winter, without any means of getting up to the settlement, a distance of 250 miles; but he had foreseen this difficulty, and had left orders at Anadyrsk that if he failed to return in canoes before the river closed, dog-sledges should be sent to his assistance. Notwithstanding the famine the dog-sledges were sent, and Bush, with two men, had returned on them to Anadyrsk. Finding that settlement famine-stricken and deserted, he had started without a moment's delay for Gizhiga, his exhausted and starving dogs dying along the road.

The situation of affairs, then, when I met Bush on the summit of the
Russki Krebet, was briefly as follows:

Forty-four men were living at the mouth of the Anadyr River, 250 miles from the nearest settlement, without provisions enough to last them through the winter, and without any means whatever of getting away. The village of Anadyrsk was deserted, and with the exception of a few teams at Penzhina, there were no available dogs in all the Northern District, from the Okhotsk Sea to Bering Strait. Under such circumstances, what could be done? Bush and I discussed the question all night beside our lonely camp-fire under the Russki Krebet, but could come to no decision, and after sleeping three or four hours we started for Anadyrsk. Late in the afternoon we drove into the settlement—but it could be called a settlement no longer. The two upper villages—"Osolkin" and "Pokorukof," which on the previous winter had presented so thriving an appearance, were now left without a single inhabitant, and Markova itself was occupied only by a few starving families whose dogs had all died, and who were therefore unable to get away. No chorus of howls announced our arrival; no people came out to meet us; the windows of the houses were closed with wooden shutters, and half buried in drifts; the snow was unbroken by paths, and the whole village was silent and desolate. It looked as if one-half of the inhabitants had died and the other half had gone to the funeral! We stopped at a small log-house where Bush had established his headquarters, and spent the remainder of the day in talking over our respective experiences.

The unpleasant situation in which we found ourselves placed was due almost entirely to the famine at Anadyrsk. The late arrival and consequent wreck of the Golden Gate was of course a great misfortune; but it would not have been irretrievable had not the famine deprived us of all means of transportation. The inhabitants of Anadyrsk, as well as of all the other Russian settlements in Siberia, are dependent for their very existence upon the fish which enter the rivers every summer to spawn, and are caught by thousands as they make their way up-stream toward the shallow water of the tributary brooks in the interior of the country. As long as these migrations of the fish are regular the natives have no difficulty in providing themselves with an abundance of food; but once in every three or four years, for some unexplained reason, the fish fail to come, and the following winter brings precisely such a famine as the one which I have described at Anadyrsk, only frequently much worse. In 1860 more than a hundred and fifty natives died of starvation in four settlements on the coast of Penzhinsk Gulf, and the peninsula of Kamchatka has been swept by famines again and again since the Russian conquest, until its population has been reduced more than one-half. Were it not for the Wandering Koraks, who come to the relief of the starving people with their immense herds of reindeer, I firmly believe that the settled population of Siberia, including the Russians, Chuances, Yukagirs, and Kamchadals, would become extinct in less than fifty years. The great distance of the settlements one from another, and the absence of any means of intercommunication in summer, make each village entirely dependent upon its own resources, and prevent any mutual support and assistance, until it is too late to be of any avail. The first victims of such famines are always the dogs; and the people being thus deprived of their only means of transportation, cannot get away from the famine-stricken settlement, and after eating their boots, sealskin thongs, and scraps of untanned leather, they finally die of pure starvation. For this, however, their own careless improvidence is primarily responsible. They might catch and dry fish enough in one year to last them three; but instead of doing this, they provide barely food enough to last them through one winter, and take the chances of starvation on the next. No experience, however severe—no suffering, however great, teaches them prudence. A man who has barely escaped starvation one winter, will run precisely the same risk on the next, rather than take a little extra trouble and catch a few more fish. Even when they see that a famine is inevitable, they take no measures to mitigate its severity or to obtain relief, until they find themselves absolutely without a morsel to put in their mouths.

[Illustration: AN ARCTIC FUNERAL]

A native of Anadyrsk once happened to tell me, in the course of conversation, that he had only five days' dog-food left. "But," said I, "what do you intend to do at the end of those five days?"—"Bokh yevo znaiet"—God only knows!—was the characteristic response, and the native turned carelessly away as if it were a matter of no consequence whatever. If God only knew, he seemed to think that it made very little difference whether anybody else knew or not. After he had fed his dogs the last dried fish in his storehouse, it would be time enough to look about for more; but until then he did not propose to borrow any unnecessary trouble. This well known recklessness and improvidence of the natives finally led the Russian Government to establish at several of the north-eastern Siberian settlements a peculiar institution which may be called a Fish Savings Bank, or Starvation Insurance Office. It was organised at first by the gradual purchase from the natives of about a hundred thousand dried fish, or yukala, which constituted the capital stock of the bank. Every male inhabitant of the settlement was then obliged by law to pay into this bank annually one-tenth of all the fish he caught, and no excuse was admitted for a failure. The surplus fund thus created was added every year to the capital, so that as long as the fish continued to come regularly, the resources of the bank were constantly accumulating. When, however, the fish for any reason failed and a famine was threatened, every depositor—or, more strictly speaking, tax-payer—was allowed to borrow from the bank enough fish to supply his immediate wants, upon condition of returning the same on the following summer, together with the regular annual payment of ten per cent. It is evident that an institution once thoroughly established upon such a basis, and managed upon such principles, could never fail, but would constantly increase its capital of dried fish until the settlement would be perfectly secure against even the possibility of famine. At Kolyma, a Russian post on the Arctic Ocean, where the experiment was first tried, it proved a complete success. The bank sustained the inhabitants of the village through severe famines during two consecutive winters, and its capital in 1867 amounted to 300,000 dried fish, and was accumulating at the rate of 20,000 a year. Anadyrsk, not being a Russian military post, had no bank of this kind; but had our work been continued another year, we intended to petition the Government for the organisation of such institutions at all the settlements, Russian and native, along the whole route of our line.

In the meantime, however, the famine was irremediable, and on December 1, 1867, poor Bush found himself in a deserted settlement 600 versts from Gizhiga without money, without provisions, and without means of transportation—but with a helpless party of forty-four men, at the mouth of the Anadyr River, dependent upon him for support. Building a telegraph line under such circumstances was out of the question. All that he could hope to do would be to keep his parties supplied with provisions until the arrival of horses and men from Yakutsk should enable him to resume work.

On November 29th, finding that I could be of no further assistance at Anadyrsk, and that I was only helping to eat up more rapidly Bush's scanty supply of provisions, I started with two Penzhina sledges for Gizhiga. As I did not again visit the Northern District, and shall have no further occasion to refer to it, I will relate briefly here the little which I afterward learned by letter with regard to the misfortunes and unhappy experiences of the Company's employés in that region. The sledges that I had ordered from Gizhiga reached Penzhina late in December, with about 3000 pounds of beans, rice, hard-bread, and assorted stores. As soon as possible after their arrival Bush sent half a dozen sledges and a small quantity of provisions to the party at the mouth of the Anadyr River and in February they returned, bringing six men. Determined to accomplish something, however little, Bush sent these six men to a point on the Myan River, about seventy-five versts from Anadyrsk, and set them at work on snow-shoes cutting poles along the route of the line. Later in the winter another expedition was sent to Anadyr Bay, and on the 4th of March it also returned, bringing Lieutenant Macrae and seven more men. This party experienced terrible weather on its way from the mouth of the river to Anadyrsk, and one of its members—a man named Robinson—died in a storm about 150 versts east of the settlement. His body was left unburied in one of the houses which Bush had erected the previous summer and his comrades pushed on. As soon as they reached Anadyrsk they were sent to the Myan, and by the middle of March the two parties together had cut and distributed along the banks of that river about 3000 poles. In April, however, their provisions began again to run short, they were gradually reduced to the verge of starvation, and Bush started a second time for Gizhiga with a few miserable half-starved and exhausted dog-teams, to get more provisions. During his absence the unfortunate parties on the Myan were left to take care of themselves, and after consuming their last morsel of food and eating up three horses which had previously been sent to them from Anadyrsk, they organised themselves into a forlorn hope, and started on snow-shoes for the settlement. It was a terrible walk for half-starving men; and although they reached their destination in safety, they were entirely exhausted, and when they approached the village could hardly go a hundred yards at a time without falling. At Anadyrsk they succeeded in obtaining a small quantity of reindeer-meat, upon which they lived until the return of Lieutenant Bush from Gizhiga with provisions, some time in May. Thus ended the second winter's work in the Northern District. As far as practical results were concerned, it was an almost complete failure; but it developed in our officers and men a courage, a perseverance, and a patient endurance of hardships which deserved, and which under more favourable auspices would have achieved, the most brilliant success. In the month of February, while Mr. Norton and his men were at work on the Myan River, the thermometer indicated more than forty degrees below zero during sixteen days out of twenty-one, sank five times to -60° and once to -68°, or one hundred degrees below the freezing point of water. Cutting poles on snow-shoes, in a temperature ranging from 40° to 60° below zero is, in itself, no slight trial of men's hardihood; but when to this are added the sufferings of hunger and the peril of utter starvation in a perfect wilderness, it passes human endurance, and the only wonder is that Norton and Macrae could accomplish as much as they did.

Returning from Anadyrsk, I reached Gizhiga on the 15th of December, after a hard and lonely journey of sixteen days. A special courier had just arrived there from Yakutsk, bringing letters and orders from Major Abaza.

He had succeeded, with the sanction and cooperation of the governor of that province, in hiring for a period of three years a force of eight hundred Yakut labourers, at a fixed rate of sixty rubles, or about forty dollars a year for each man. He had also purchased three hundred Yakut horses and pack-saddles, and an immense quantity of material and provisions of various kinds for the equipment and subsistence of horses and workmen. A portion of these men were already on their way to Okhotsk, and the whole force would be sent thither in successive detachments as rapidly as possible, and distributed from there along the whole route of the line. It would be necessary, of course, to put this large force of native labourers under skilled American superintendence; and as we had not foremen enough in all our parties to oversee more than five or six gangs of men, Major Abaza determined to send a courier to Petropavlovsk for the officers who had sailed from San Francisco in the bark Onward, and who he presumed had been landed by that vessel in Kamchatka. He directed me, therefore, to make arrangements for the transportation of these men from Petropavlovsk to Gizhiga; to prepare immediately for the reception of fifty or sixty Yakut labourers; to send six hundred army rations to Yamsk for the subsistence of our American party there, and three thousand pounds of rye flour for a party of Yakuts who would reach there in February. To fill all these requisitions I had at my disposal about fifteen dog-sledges, and even these had gone with provisions to Penzhina for the relief of Lieutenant Bush. With the assistance of the Russian governor I succeeded in getting two Cossacks to go to Petropavlovsk after the Americans who were presumed to have been left there by the Onward, and half a dozen Koraks to carry provisions to Yamsk, while Lieutenant Arnold himself sent sledges for the six hundred rations. I thus retained my own fifteen sledges to supply Lieutenant Sandford and party, who were now cutting poles on the Tilghai River, north of Penzhinsk Gulf. One day late in December, while Dodd and I were out on the river above the settlement training a team of dogs, word was brought to us that an American had arrived from Kamchatka, bringing news from the long-missing bark Onward and the party of men whom she landed at Petropavlovsk. Hurrying back to the village with all possible speed, we found Mr. Lewis, the American in question, seated comfortably in our house drinking tea. This enterprising young man—who, by the way, was a telegraph operator, wholly unaccustomed to rough life—without being able to speak a word of Russian, had traversed alone, in mid-winter, the whole wilderness of Kamchatka from Petropavlovsk to Gizhiga. He had been forty-two days on the road, and had travelled on dog-sledges nearly twelve hundred miles, with no companions except a few natives and a Cossack from Tigil. He seemed disposed to look upon this achievement very modestly, but in some respects it was one of the most remarkable journeys ever made by one of the Company's employés.